


Mirrored Flame

by Dolorosa



Category: Obernewtyn Chronicles - Isobelle Carmody
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 12:32:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: Three years after the events ofThe Red Queen, Elspeth Gordie returns to Redport.





	Mirrored Flame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



The people of Redland called it the Time of Tempests. It was the time of year when the days were longer, and storms raged across the desert, rattling windows, and covering everything in the city with a layer of red dust. At night, the residents of Redport boarded themselves up inside their houses, carefully barring the way to rooftops that at other times provided an escape from the hotter temperatures. Every morning, they tied scarves across their mouths, and, armed with brooms, did their best to sweep away the dust and detritus. The waves of the sea battered against the Talons, and ships remained sheltered in the bay, as no shipfolk dared to venture out into unsafe waters. For three long months the storms howled and roared, and the city braced itself against the onslaught. The winds screamed westward across the desert, and Elspeth Gordie came down from the mountains.

Ordinarily the residents of Redport had a clear view across the land — those with houses on the outskirts of the city could spot travellers from great distances in all directions — but in Elspeth's case the whirling clouds of dust obscured her arrival until she was almost in the centre of the city. Wrapped in cloaks and scarves to protect against the onslaught of the storms, she might have been any Redlander as she wove her way through half-remembered streets. She passed walls decorated with mosaics, shops and market stalls standing idle and empty, and intricately sculpted fountains, the water inside them running rusty red. From time to time she paused to scan the unconscious minds of the people sequestered in the houses surrounding her, seeking to confirm she was travelling in the right direction. As the sun rose to shine fitfully through the dusty sky, Elspeth arrived at her destination.

It had been three years since she had ridden away from the city.

*

Dragon was deep in concentration, midway through a meeting with advisors. Every year during the time of the storms they gathered to discuss the same thing: the city's food stocks. Dragon had continued relying on food grown under the vast domes that covered great swathes of land on the outskirts of Redport, and she had ensured that several of those responsible for keeping the domes' crops growing were among her closest advisors. As everywhere in the ruined world, feeding people, eking out vegetables, fruit and grain from the scorched and burning earth was a monumental challenge, and she was well aware that her primary responsibility as a queen was to feed her people. And so she held these regular meetings to track supplies, and decide if rationing would be necessary. So far, they seemed likely to avoid it — stocks were at expected levels, and were growing fast enough to meet the city's needs, for the current year at least.

'We can meet about this again in two weeks to reassess the situation, Mariya,' Dragon said, drawing proceedings to a close.

And then she looked up, and saw that Elspeth was in the room.

The two women ran towards each other, Dragon leaving her meeting in a rather undignified manner, and embraced like old friends long parted — which indeed they were. Dragon was astonished to find tears in her eyes as she clung to Elspeth, shaking with overwhelming emotion.

'I thought I'd never see you again, nor even hear from you! I thought we'd be parted forever! Oh, Elspeth, it is good to see you after so long!'

It took Dragon a while to realise, but eventually she noticed that Elspeth had thrown up an impenetrable coercive shield, guarding not just her thoughts, but the emotions that underpinned them as well. She was well used to Elspeth's secrecy and fierce protectiveness towards her innermost feelings, however, and refrained from commenting on it, instead drawing Elspeth towards the circle of advisors.

'You've caught us midway through a meeting, Elspeth,' she said. 'We've just finished discussing food supplies in Redport, and are about to move on to more exciting things. Join us, if you like. Friends, some of you may remember Elspeth Gordie, who helped so much and gave so much for this city's liberation. I knew her from my time in exile, and her wise perspective is always welcome.'

The next hour was Elspeth's introduction to Dragon's transformation from courageous freedom fighter into regal ruler, as well as the way Redport was governed. She watched and listened as Dragon discussed and planned with her advisors, and sensed the underlying _performance_ of it all. Dragon was canny and careful, choosing when to speak and press an issue, and when to encourage and remain silent. The people at the meeting were clearly chosen from all levels of Redland society — men and women, old and young, representing workers from a diverse range of professions, and comprising Redlanders, Sadorians, Gadfians and Landfolk. Everyone's perspective was welcome, and Dragon rarely had to lean on the grandeur of her position, although a perceptive observer would have noticed that she had a talent for inserting her own preferences into the conversation but making them appear to have been suggested by other people.

The group was planning a festival, and Elspeth soon realised this was an annual event, a melding of the traditions of the four main cultures who had made the new Redland their home. The original festival had been somewhat obscured by the fog of time, passed down half-remembered by generations of enslaved Redlanders, and revived under Dragon as a celebration of resilience, rebirth, plurality and memory. There was a tension in Dragon's role between practicalities and pageantry, but Elspeth saw that she handled both adeptly, moving with ease between the logistics of assigning market stall locations to Redlanders coming in from outside the city for the festival to fireworks spectacles and the plans for her own eye-catching festive costume.

When the meeting was over, the advisors drifted away, leaving Elspeth and Dragon alone. Dragon led Elspeth from the meeting room towards the kitchens in search of food, noting again her friend's guardedness, her fierce coercive shield, and the fact that she had not attempted to farseek anyone — Talented or unTalented — since arriving in the royal residence. She was curious as to why Elspeth had left Eden, but she could sense that this was not a safe question to ask, and so contented herself with another.

'How long are you planning to stay, Elspeth?'

Something passed over Elspeth's face, a flickering of emotion that she was not able to control, but her voice was steady when she answered Dragon.

'I'm not sure,' she said, 'but I can tell you this: I will stay until after the festival. I haven't seen Redport as a free city, and it will be wonderful to experience it as a place of celebration. And I want to see what kind of queen you are.'

*

The storms broke the day before the festival, and the city sprang back into riotous life. Overnight, the outdoor markets returned, stocked not only with food and household necessities, but also the candles, lanterns, and vivid face paints that would be used throughout the festival evening. The streets swarmed with people buying supplies, talking excitedly about their costumes, and how they would decorate their faces.

Dragon and Elspeth were not among them. Although Dragon would walk among her people throughout the evening, seeing and being seen, it was felt that a queen's festival outfit should be something of a mystery, and require more planning than an impulse-bought collection of glittery paints from a market stall. And there was no way Elspeth could move around the city anonymously, so she had to content herself with being adorned by Dragon's costume designer. She had to admit the designer — a Redland woman named Elif — had done a remarkable job, particularly with her own costume, constructed hastily in free moments between meetings. It was a flowing dress in tones of green and grey and the pale pink of dawn, evoking the colours of the mountains and skies in which she had come of age, and even in the hot Redland climate, it was comfortable and cool, like a breath of fresh Highland air. Elspeth kept her hair and face unadorned, apart from a twisting, labyrinthine pattern that bloomed across one cheekbone, like vines, or perhaps like the designs on Beforetime memory seeds.

If Elspeth's costume evoked trees and dawn and growing things, Dragon's was all regal flame: deep reds and glittering golds, and a coiling piece of jewellery that curled up her arm and swept over her head, mirroring her mythical namesake. Her eyes and cheeks were streaked with gold, with hints of red and pink and blue, like licking flames. As the night fell, the two women gathered candles and lanterns, and made their way outside, to the streets of Redport.

It was a sign of how much things had changed in the three years of Dragon's rule that they were able to walk about unaccompanied, in complete safety. An idle observer might have assumed that they were wandering aimlessly, but there was an underlying purpose to their journey, with Dragon taking care to cover as wide a swathe of the city as possible. She made judicious use of her Talents, projecting images of fire-breathing dragons and other legendary beasts into the darkening streets, setting them to race along alleys and fly above the myriad market stalls. This was as much a part of her role as queen as her work keeping track of food stocks and sitting in trade meetings: to be vividly, gloriously, ostentatiously present. The task of uniting the fractured, violated, discordant people of Redland, of building community and creating a new society on the bones of the old, had required a phenomenal amount of trust, and Dragon did not take that trust lightly. She knew she had to, in a sense, perform accessibility — except that it was clear to Elspeth that it was not a performance, that Dragon genuinely loved these small moments of connection. Everywhere they went they were accosted by Redport residents: a little girl handed Dragon a bouquet of paper flowers, two Land men who had the look of brothers offered her a free spiced drink from their market stall, and an older couple — two women — complimented her on her elaborate headdress. The press of so many people made Elspeth uneasy, but she stuck close to Dragon, accepting the drinks and snacks and gifts pressed on her, as they progressed through the winding streets of Redport. As the night wore on, the crowds thinned, and the two women drifted slowly towards the harbour, arm in arm, their faces lit by the flickering light of their lanterns.

'You still haven't told me how long you plan to stay, and where you're going to move on to next. Are you truly happy with this life of constant motion, Elspeth?' asked Dragon. 'Did you not want to stay and rest, in quiet obscurity, after so long at the heart of things?'

'I thought,' said Elspeth, 'that what I hated was my significance and near legendary status — I thought I was done with doing, and wanted to just _be_. But I realised what I truly hated had been to be hunted, to be at constant risk, to hide, and to spend my life forced to help others to hide. My time in Eden was precious, a brief moment of sanctuary, a moment almost suspended out of time, but it was only that — a moment. We all have to live in this world, humans and beasts, connected and communicating, and until there is a way to farseek over great distances and tainted ground, we have a responsibility to travel to maintain those connections. I realised I needed that. I needed to be part of the world, not hidden away, and the beasts of Eden realised that for the first time in their history, they had been given a choice: they would never live and die at the whims and will of humans again, but rather were free to live as equal partners, sharing the world with humans. We were all wrong — humans and beasts — to think the solution was to hide ourselves away. Eden will always be a sanctuary, but for it to remain safe, it must send envoys out into the world to speak on its behalf. That's why I'm here, to pave the way, so that in the future, beasts will follow.'

Elspeth and Dragon's path had taken them to the harbour. The waves lapped gently against the sea wall, and the inky black of the water was illuminated with the lights of thousands of discarded candles, set to burn themselves out under the rising moon. The two women paused to lean against the sea wall, reaching over into the ocean to set their lanterns adrift. The flames leapt and danced, mirrored in the women's bright eyes.

'Please,' said Dragon. 'Stay.'

And Elspeth turned, taking Dragon's hand and enfolding her in her arms.

'I'll stay,' she said, softly, against the sigh of the sea.

 _I'll stay_ , she repeated, farseeking. _I'll stay as long as you need me._


End file.
